Adventures in the Writing Trade: Day 1

view on leaving home

Day is breaking. I’m on the North Circular heading to the airport. From there to Dublin, bus to Malahide, boat to Lambay Island.

Lambay and the beach at Rush

I’m stoked. Lambay is a mile-square island just off the coast of County Dublin. I’ve spent years admiring it from Rush beach on the mainland as my in-laws live in An Ros. The next four days I’m going to spend on the island on a writing retreat with nine other writers.

The island has been in the hands of the Baring family since around 1904 (the year of ‘Ulysses’’s action) and now two younger scions of the family run the trust which looks after it. Most interestingly it serves as a small model for sustainable living, a role forced on it by virtue of being an inhabited island but enthusiastically grasped as a purpose for the trust.

There are two particular reasons I am excited. One, the house on the island was designed by Edwin Lutyens, one of my favourite architects. Besides the Cenotaph and the Institute, local to me at the heart of Hampstead Garden Suburb, he designed Castle Drago in the West Country (Devon) which I remember fondly, art deco right down to the bathroom and shower.

Two, one of my favourite films by one of my favourite writers and directors was written on the island. ‘Black Narcissus’ (1947) by Powell & Pressburger was drafted by the former in two days on the island. Here’s a previous post on this movie.

As I set off I’m wearing some tan shorts like the ones David Farrar [Mr Dean] wears in the film (a tad longer) in unconscious homage to the peak of writing output from the island.

David Farrar & Jean Simmons & the shorts

 

 

 

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The Casting Game: Reservoir Dogs

To celebrate the arrival of Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood (which has grown on me since watching it last week) I’ve recast where it all began for Quentin, Reservoir Dogs

Jonah Hill

as

Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn)

Joss Ackland

as

Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney)

Dominic West

as

Marvin (Kirk Baltz)

Chris Isaak

as

Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen)

Malcolm Allison

as

Mr White (Harvey Keitel)

Paul Weller

as

Mr Orange (Tim Roth)

4 reasons to love Albert Finney

A friend of mine (whose artwork sits below where I am writing) is a close relative of Albert Finney so it was with a bit of a jolt that the news of the actor’s death caught me yesterday. I had last watched him on the obscure Channel 81 on Freeview (which is my favourite, random old movies from the 50s and 60s) in the somewhat bizarre (but very interesting) Gumshoe a few weeks ago.

Last night Erin Brockovich felt like the right celebration for a Friday night of a distinctive and charming actor. I’d forgotten that the movie was one of Steven Soderbergh’s, adding to the alignment as the sad news came in on the same day as posting this new article which brackets Soderbergh’s latest movie with my commission Missed Call and Sean Baker’s Tangerine.

1. Tom Jones (1963) as Tom Jones

From the year of my birth, derived from one of my favourite books, characterised by a youthful cheekiness.

2. Under The Volcano (1984) as Geoffrey Firmin

From my university days, watched at the Arts Cinema Cambridge (also sadly missed), I remember it as a deeply disturbing performance and movie.

3. Erin Brockovich (2000) as Ed Masry

Avuncular, great chemistry with his shining co-star Julia Roberts, still that cheekiness.

4. Skyfall (2012) as Kincade

Shot by my first boss (Roger Deakins), with the immortal line:

Welcome to Scotland!

as he shotguns two of Bond’s assailants. Cheeky and irresistible to the end.

 

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) as Arthur Seaton – bridging 50s Angry Young Men (here) and 60s Swinging England (Tom Jones)

Lost Postcards No.2

The second recently re-found old postcard from my small, random collection

This one cost me a massive 20p (pencilled on the back). I think I bought it because it reminded me of Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde.

Aubrey Beardsley (1872 – 1898) by Frederick H. Evans (c.1894)

The postcard was “Manufactured in Berlin”. Oddly it specifies “For Inland use only” – as it’s written in English I assume it means in Britain not Germany.

The sitter is quite androgynous as you can see.

Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas (1870–1945) is best known as Oscar Wilde’s lover, and is often blamed for his downfall.

The name ‘Henry Ainley’ is printed at the bottom.

It turns out Henry Hinchliffe Ainley died the same year as Bosie. His dates are 21st August 1879 – 31st October 1945. He was an English actor of stage and screen, specialising in Shakespeare.

He was born in Leeds and brought up in Morley by father Richard, a cloth finisher, and mother Ada. He moved to London to pursue his career in acting. He made his professional stage debut as a messenger in Macbeth with F.R. Benson’s company.  Later he joined Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s company. He first came to prominence in 1902 as Paolo in Paolo and Francesca.

He played Gloucester in Henry V at the Lyceum in London. Ainley returned to Leeds to appear at the Grand Theatre. Later roles included Oliver Cromwell, Mark Antony in Julius Caesar and the lead in Macbeth. In 1912 he portrayed Malvolio and then Leontes under the direction of Harley Granville-Barker. He played Hamlet several times, including a 1930 production which was selected for a Royal Command Performance.

John Gielgud thought highly of Ainley and had a long-standing ambition to perform with him which he eventually fulfilled when he played Iago to Ainley’s Othello in a 1932 BBC Radio broadcast. Gielgud however described Ainley’s Prospero as “disastrous”, recalling it in 1996 (in The Sunday Times).

Ainley played Shakespeare on screen in Henry VIII (1911) and As You Like It (1936), the latter alongside his son Richard and Laurence Olivier.

Among the other roles Ainley played were: Robert Waring in The Shulamite (The Savoy Theatre, London, 1906.); Joseph Quinney in Quinneys (on stage in 1915 and on film in 1919); in A. A. Milne’s The Dover Road opposite Athene Seyler (1922); the Bishop of Chelsea in Bernard Shaw’s Getting Married (The Haymarket Theatre);  James Fraser in St. John Ervine’s The First Mrs. Fraser (1929 on stage, 1932 on film); and he starred in James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan (on stage and on radio). He was an early example of stage-screen crossover.

His films include:
She Stoops to Conquer (1914)
Sweet Lavender (1915)
Sowing the Wind (1916)
The Marriage of William Ashe (1916)
The Manxman (1917) – not to be confused with the second silent adaptation, directed by Hitchcock twelve years alter (1929)
Build Thy House (1920)
The Prince and the Beggarmaid (1921)
The Royal Oak (1923)
The First Mrs. Fraser (1932)

In 1921 Ainley became a member of the council of RADA (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) and was its president from 1931 to 1933.

Ainley led his own own theatre company. In 1932 he helped save the debt-laden Sadler’s Wells theatre. Ainley thought Sadler’s Wells regular Samuel Phelps the “greatest actor of all” and Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson “the greatest of Hamlets”.

Ainley was married three times – to Susanne Sheldon, Elaine Fearon and novelist Bettina Riddle (aka Baroness von Hutten zum Stolzenberg). He had several children, including actors Henry T. Ainley, Richard Ainley and Anthony Ainley, as well as non-thesps Sam and Timothy Ainley. Another off-spring was Henrietta Riddle, who was briefly engaged to journalist Alistair Cooke in 1932.

15 letters in the possession of Olivier’s widow, Joan Plowright, suggest that Ainley may have had a sexual relationship with Dear, Dear Larry in the late 30s. The letters suggest that Ainley was infatuated with Olivier.

Ainley died in London and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. I’ll go visit next time I’m over that way.

As Romeo in ‘Romeo and Juliet’

The photo in my postcard seems to have been taken by Lizzie Caswall-Smith.

Lizzie Caswall-Smith (1870-1958) (possibly without hyphen) is pretty interesting in her own right. She was a British photographer who specialised in society and celebrity studio portraits. These were often used for postcards.

Caswall-Smith was associated with the women’s suffrage movement and photographed many suffragettes including Christabel Pankhurst, Flora Drummond and Millicent Fawcett. The other actors she photographed included Camille Clifford, Sydney Valentine, Billie Burke and Maude Fealy. She photographed Florence Nightingale in 1910 (which fetched £5,500 (Nov 2008)). On the back of that particular photograph she had jotted in pencil: “Florence Nightingale taken just before she died, House nr Park Lane (London). The only photograph I ever took out of studio – I shall never forget the experience.”

Caswall-Smith operated the Gainsborough Studio at 309 Oxford Street from 1907 until 1920 when she moved to 90 Great Russell Street. She stayed at that address until her retirement in 1930 (aged 60). She exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society in 1902 and 1913. Her portraits of Peter Llewelyn Davies and J. M. Barrie are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

 

 

The Casting Game No. 45 – Gumshoe

Frank Finlay and Billie Whitelaw in ‘Gumshoe’ (1971) dir. Stephen Frears

The Remake: Jake Gyllenhaal as Frank Finlay as William Ginley

The remake: Sue Johnston as Billie Whitelaw as Ellen

Coincidences No.s 340-348

No. 340 White Album

I walk into the office of a London production company in Shoreditch to start a new project series-producing a sports documentary series. From a varied playlist, While My Guitar Gently Weeps is playing across the office.

The same night I go to a brilliant gig at the Jazz Cafe, Camden Town. It is a young band called The Midnight Special playing the whole of The Beatles’ White Album (technically called simply The Beatles) from end to end. Today (22nd Nov) is the 50th anniversary of the UK release of the genius double LP.

No. 341 The Cure

I see a tweet about Brexit which makes me laugh – something along the lines of: Has anyone tried just hitting the UK on/off button? I click through to the tweeter – she describes herself as a Frenchie living in London and a Cure fan (among a couple of other things).

I am in a restaurant in Belfast as I read this tweet, over for a speaking gig at the Belfast Media Festival (about VR and the future of broadcasting). Just as I am reading it The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry comes on the music system.

I have a history of Cure-related coincidences. As a teenager I saved a small black cat from a tied sack and a watery death. The near-perpetrator was Ashley Baron-Cohen, these days a film-maker in LA. Back then a hard-hearted teen. So I offered to take the cat (I’d never had one before). I called her Woof. I took her into my other friend’s car to get her home. As Jon turned the ignition, The Cure’s Love Cats came on the radio.

No. 342 Carlingford

I am on my way back from Belfast Media Festival. On the plane I am sitting next to two women. I get talking to the one next to me who, contrary to appearances (not the least sharply dressed, relaxed look) turns out to be a barrister from Dublin. She comes from a village called Blackrock which is near where my wife comes from in Co. Louth, Ireland. It turns out she has a property she now rents in my wife’s village, Carlingford.

We both then get talking to the third person in our little EasyJet row. She lives in London, but stems from Liverpool and Strabane. She has an English accent and a striking Irish face (the high cheek-boned type). This second woman has an auntie Rosie living in Carlingford. (I check with my wife when I get home and of course she knows Rosie.)

So that’s one row – three people (two British) connected to a small village in Ireland.

No. 343 Rugby League

My wife asks me if I have ever gone to watch Rugby League.

The same day I pick up a long unfinished novel with a view to finally pushing to the end. It is Man of Parts by David Lodge, about HG Wells. The bookmark marking my place where I stopped a couple of years ago is a ticket from the only Rugby League game I ever went to watch. England vs New Zealand at the 2012 Olympic Stadium in Stratford. I bought the ticket by mistake, thinking it was Rugby Union. It is one of the only sports events I have ever walked out of – take all the good things about Rugby, chuck them away and stick with what’s left – that is Rugby League in my (one-off) experience.

No. 344 The English Patient

The English Patient (1996) with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes

I am talking to Channel 4 documentary Comissioning Editor Fozia Khan as we enter Belfast International Airport about Anthony Minghella. She lives in the same street as my best-friend and his house was owned by Minghella just before him. Minghella directed among many other movies The English Patient.

The next day I am talking to my wife and the subject of Sikhs comes up – she mentions in particular the Sikh character in Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient, one of her favourite writers.

(I haven’t thought about The English Patient for many years. I have never read it, think I saw the movie back at the time though not 100% sure.)

No. 345 CUFS

Amber Reeves

I am reading the novel Man of Parts by David Lodge and am intrigued by one of the characters, HG Well’s young lover Amber Reeves. I read that Amber Reeves while at Cambridge set up CUFS – the Cambridge University Fabian Society. This was in 1906 and was the first society at Cambridge to include women from its founding. Female students met on an equal footing with men to discuss a broad range of topics from religion to sex with a freedom not available elsewhere in their lives.

While a Girton girl I set up CUFS – the Cambridge University Film Society. Visitors included Michael Powell, David Puttnam (with an early cut of The Mission), Peter Shaffer (who, unlike me, hated the movie of Equus) and Angela Carter. Sessions ranged from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia to French-Canadian cinema of the 70s (Les Ordres).

No. 346 Holborn

One of my best friends is over from Aspen, Colorado (we were teens together but she moved to the USA when she got married). I arrange to meet her for breakfast before work one day as my diary is rammed with work stuff and she has only a couple of days to play with. She suggests me meet at her hotel – it turns out to be in Kingsway, Holborn. I don’t check the exact address or look on the map until I am leaving the house.

The job I have immediately after the get-together is a guest lecture for Syracuse University. They have a London campus. It is in an obscure small lane behind that self-same hotel.

No. 347 B & K

I have a craving for chicken soup and so go for lunch with my middle brother at a Jewish deli at the far end of Edgware – the delicious irony being that is run by a lovely family of Greeks. It is called B & K Salt Beef Bar.

As I sit looking out the big front window onto the wrong end of Edgware High street a van passes belonging to B & K Plumbing & Heating Engineers from Camberley in deep South London/Surrey.

No. 348 Nick & Nora

(1934)

This morning I get an email notification from the Goodreads website. The subject-line is: Updates from Noora and Nick. Noora is an ex-Channel4 colleague who now lives in Finland. Her name is Arabic, as opposed to the Irish spelling. Nick is another old colleague – we worked together on Embarrassing Bodies among others when he was at Maverick TV.

Nick & Nora are the heroes of Dashiell Hammett’s noir detective stories, both fast livers with bad livers (i.e. hard drinkers). I was going to call my son Noah Nora if he had turned out to be a girl – after Nora from The Thin Man.

Coincidences No.s 212 & 213

No. 212  (27.03.18)

26th March 2018

I am working with a fellow producer in Covent Garden in his office. We are talking to a colleague from Glasgow-based Finestripe Productions who attended the Labour Anti-semitism rally outside Parliament last night. This prompts my co-producer to mention who his MP is (as he was prominent at the event).  “Where is the constituency?” Harrow he tells me.

I go round to my mum’s for dinner with my step-dad. We have arranged to go for a Chinese somewhere in Colindale. When I arrive the plan has changed. It is more of a family affair and we are going to a different Chinese. We drive through Harrow, on to Hatch End. (Not sure I’ve ever been here before.) I decide to phone my co-producer from outside the Chinese: “I think I may be in your manor.” I tell him the name of the restaurant. “Look opposite, slightly to the right. Can you see Wellington Road?” I can. “That’s where we live.”

No. 213 (26 & 27.3.18)

1962

I am watching a movie from the 80s, ‘Winter Kills’ starring Jeff Bridges. It strikes me that Jeff looks a lot like my old friend Adam D.

I get an email from Adam D for the first time in ages, about 70mm screenings of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ in his home town of Amsterdam – do I fancy flying over?

The Oscars: What do they know?

With the Oscars coming up this weekend, it’s a good moment to keep things in perspective. I am a big fan of 1970s Hollywood, a golden age in movie-making, and whilst the Academy honored ‘The Godfather’ in 1972, ‘…Cuckoo’s Nest’ in 1975, and ‘Annie Hall’ in 1977 with the Best Picture gong, some of the other collective decisions across that decade look very dubious with the distance of hindsight. Actually they probably looked pretty dubious at the time in the same way that, for example, ‘Birdman’ (2014) and ‘Forrest Gump’ (1994) did.

Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould in ‘M*A*S*H’ (1970)

In 1970 ‘Patton’ beat ‘M*A*S*H’ which tells you a lot about what was going on in the world at the time, particularly from an American perspective.

1974 was a singularly tough year with ‘The Godfather II’ up against another Coppola, ‘The Conversation’, and ‘Chinatown’. They made Godfather 2 an offer it couldn’t refuse which is justifiable but you could still have a pretty good debate about that one.

But 1976 is the real aberration. The Academy picked ‘Rocky’ above ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Network’ and ‘All the President’s Men’. Really?!??!!! ‘Taxi Driver’ is an absolute masterpiece. The other two are both very fine works which have and will stand the test of time. ‘Rocky’ is a reminder that the Academy is largely composed of American men which for some reason brings to mind the famous misquote of H.L. Mencken:

“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

What the great journalist/satirist actually said was:

“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

Not as neat but the point relates – ‘Rocky’ is a real “great masses of the plain people” decision.

The decade is crowned with another humdinger. 1979 saw ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ triumph over ‘Apocalypse Now’. Who even knows what ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ is now? It was enjoyable at the time and well made but no masterpiece for all time. In my eyes ‘Apocalypse Now’ is the greatest film made in my lifetime. Even its flaws are fascinating and right.

So when the Best Picture is announced this Sunday, and if it’s not Martin McDonagh’s ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ , we can chalk it up to the long heritage of fallibility and short-sightedness of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences…

• 2015: Spotlight beat The Big Short
• 1994: Forrest Gump beat Pulp Fiction
• 1983: Terms of Endearment beat The Big Chill
• 1948: Hamlet beat The Red Shoes

I’ve seen some of the back end of this as a voting member of BAFTA and of EFA (The European Film Academy). The process, the screenings, the marketing/lobbying, the demographics of the membership, it can all skew the collective judgment. Like when BAFTA failed to notice ‘Selma’ in 2014 (even though it was subsequently nominated for the Best Picture Oscar). Or take this year’s BAFTAs – how did the performance of Bria Vinaite in ‘The Florida Project’ fail to get noticed? (Or of Brooklyn Prince for that matter, the lead kid in Florida Project.) And what about Mary J Blige’s outstanding performance in Dee Rees’ ‘Mudbound’? Instead we got for Best Supporting Actress Allison Janney’s monotone caricature in the joyless ‘I, Tonya’.

Bria Vinaite & Brooklyn Prince in ‘The Florida Project’ (2017)

There’s no accounting for taste. Or maybe there is.

Robert Duvall in Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979)

 

 

 

Loss of Good

Today 20 years ago I entered the day at a party in Tufnell Park (where we lived then) hosted by journalist Maggie O’Kane and her husband John, a Guardian editor. Despite the late night I found myself waking early with the radio on quietly on which I heard first about the accident of Diana, Princess of Wales, then early reports of her death. I told my Other Half when she woke. Despite being not in the least royalist and not particularly interested in Lady Di during her lifetime, I felt a sadness at the loss of someone who was so evidently kind-hearted and fundamentally good.

by Mario Testino

My Mrs had left something at the party and asked me to go get it once the time was decent – it was a Sunday morning. When I was back at Maggie’s flat, John already had a conspiracy theory worked out for the ‘murder’. Occupational hazard of being a journo I guess.

Later in the day we went into town and had lunch al fresco in Covent Garden. There was a copy of the Sunday Mail at the restaurant. On the last-minute-changed front page was wailing about the tragic loss of the people’s princess: inside, too late to change, was an ugly, snidey piece with a photo taken secretly in a gym from above of her. Caught out in their rank hypocrisy.

3.3.92

I crossed paths with Diana only once. It was at the premiere of the movie ‘Hear My Song’ at the Odeon Marble Arch (formerly the Disney cinema). I had a seat by the aisle and she walked close, breezed blondely by. The Irish singer Josef Locke, the main character of the film (played by Adrian Dunbar who had invited us along), attended that night and sang her Danny Boy. I still have a white kerchief with embroidered text they gave away to mark the occasion at the back of my sock drawer. (I’ll add a photo when I get back to within reach of my socks. – done)

To mark today I bought, in semi-ironic spirit, a small Charles & Di wedding dish in a junk shop in Carlingford, Republic of Ireland a few weeks ago. It cost 3 euros. They are pretty much ten a penny (plus Brexit currency rate) over there.

 

bought in Carlingford, Co. Louth – August 2017

Atomic Blonde full soundtrack

It seems to be pretty difficult to find the full soundtrack of ‘Atomic Blonde’ online i.e.a list of all the tracks in the right order. I’m not sure this is 100% it but it’s pretty close – a small international public service from Simple Pleasures part 4.

The official soundtrack doesn’t really help as it’s a pale reflection of what’s in the movie. That’s probably because the whole thing was quite a feat of music clearance.

As far as I can tell the only missing tracks are: Drinking Song by Alfred Kluten and Fastidious Horses by Vladamir Vysotsky. Whatever they are.

Anyway, bottom line, as movie soundtracks go, it’s a bit of a cracker, especially when you hear it on a good sound system in conjunction with the pictures in all their cinematic glory.

Atomic Blonde full soundtrack on Spotify